Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Photo: KARIM KADIM

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Iraqi mourners lead a funeral procession in Baghdad, Iraq Tuesday June 15, 2004 for seven Iraqis who were killed on the highway outside of Fallujah on Monday. Mourners said the the men were ambushed outside of Fallujah and accused of cooperating with American forces after they had delivered tents to a nearby U.S. base. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim) less

Iraqi mourners lead a funeral procession in Baghdad, Iraq Tuesday June 15, 2004 for seven Iraqis who were killed on the highway outside of Fallujah on Monday. Mourners said the the men were ambushed outside of ... more

2004-06-16 04:00:00 PDT Baghdad -- Two explosions at oil pipelines near the Persian Gulf shut Iraq's main oil export terminal on Tuesday for what is expected to be about 10 days, costing the country perhaps as much as $1 billion in revenue.

The shutdown, which the authorities said was caused by a bombing on Monday and a bombing or malfunction on a second line on Tuesday, came on a day when snipers lining a highway and an overpass near Baghdad International Airport staged a well-organized ambush on a convoy, killing at least four foreign contract workers, according to a U.S. military official and a security contractor.

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In a separate attack, the top security official for the state-run Northern Oil company was slain in an ambush in Kirkuk today, security forces said. Ghazi Talabani was killed as he traveled to work in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, said Gen. Anwar Amin from Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.

The specter of sectarian strife coursed through the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday. Hundreds of furious Shiite Muslim mourners staged a funeral march through the capital and accused a hard-line Sunni cleric in the volatile city of Fallujah of ordering the deaths of six Shiite truck drivers discovered Monday in a morgue in the neighboring town of Ramadi. The cleric denied giving the order and the identities of the killers and their religion could not be established.

The incidents came in the midst of a mounting number of dramatic and sophisticated attacks taking place as Iraq's new interim government prepares to assume formal control of the country June 30. The sniper attack occurred a day after a powerful car bomb killed five foreign contractors and eight Iraqis in downtown Baghdad. The attack on the oil line was the most devastating so far in a series of ambitious infrastructure assaults clearly intended to paralyze the country.

The oil explosions severely damaged a pair of major pipelines on the Faw peninsula in southern Iraq, halting exports from the country's most important oil-producing region. In the early hours of this morning, according to news reports, another fiery explosion had ripped through a crude oil pipeline running between oil fields in northern Iraq.

The first explosion occurred late Monday about 10 miles south of the southern city of Basra and was a clear case of sabotage, witnesses said. It was uncertain if the second explosion, at about noon on Tuesday, came as the result of another attack or because technicians tried to compensate for the first incident by increasing the oil flow in a parallel pipeline, causing a violent rupture. The attacks sent temporary ripples through international petroleum markets.

Attacks on Iraq's electrical grid, oil pipelines and other infrastructure have been increasing since a major outbreak of the insurgency in April, when Basra's oil terminal was the target of a largely unsuccessful waterborne attack by suicide bombers.

Last week, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said attacks on oil pipelines alone had cost the country $200 million.

"We've basically been in a race with the enemy to see if we can build them up faster than they can tear them down," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, which closely tracks developments in Iraq. "To go after the oil undercuts the ability of Iraq to finance its own reconstruction and makes it more dependent on the United States."

The attack on the convoy of foreign workers was also part of a succession well-planned, targeted incidents, clearly aimed at disrupting rebuilding efforts. It took place between 1:30 and 2 p.m. on a north-south road veering into the highway leading to the Baghdad airport, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

Insurgents on an overpass raked a three-vehicle convoy with gunfire. Passengers in two of the cars were apparently killed, while a third car pocked with bullet holes made it to a nearby U.S. base.

A security contractor who had been briefed on the attack said it appeared that at least four people had been killed, but said he did not know their nationalities, which company they worked for or the nature of their jobs. In a separate incident, three employees of San Francisco's Steele Foundation suffered gunshot wounds Tuesday when a convoy of engineers they were guarding was ambushed south of Baghdad. The company provides security to reconstruction workers in Iraq.

The Steele guards evacuated their clients by commandeering a vehicle at the scene of the ambush and racing to a nearby U.S. military unit for protection, said Steele Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Kurtz.

"Our clients were untouched," Kurtz said. He declined to name the clients. All three wounded guards would survive, and two would be back at work today, he said.

Responsibility for Monday's suicide car bombing that killed 13 people, including five foreign workers, was claimed Tuesday by a group headed by the suspected al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A statement claiming responsibility was dated Monday and posted on an Islamist Web site on Tuesday, according to a Reuters report.